Monthly Archives: April 2016

Let me tell you how things finally went down. The old, bald guy had a bad day at work and was kind of grumpy. He actually went grocery shopping. While he was away, our boys & I ordered pizza. I removed the cake which I had hidden in the refrigerator, unwrapped the aluminum foil and left it in a pile on the counter. It was a big clue in plain sight. It turns out the boys did know about the cake in the freezer. I must have told them the story long ago.

So yes, there was a small slice missing. One red candle went in the center. I put out two presents. Traditional rules for the 20 year anniversary say I should buy china. More contemporary guidelines say one should buy platinum. So I bought both.

After my initial cake blog, a friend on Facebook sent a “Happy Anniversary” Flintstones clip. It has proven to be problematic in that I can’t get the song out of my head, even days later.

When hubby came home, the boys and I quickly helped out with the groceries, not letting him into the kitchen. Then I waited at the computer until one of my boys said, “Now.” He lit the candle and I pressed play on the music clip where Fred Flintstone and his buddies are singing and Barney is playing a Stoneway piano.

The old, bald guy walked into the kitchen and immediately lit up. He laughed and then said “Where did you get the cake?” I was kind of surprised. Then he said “There’s a slice missing.” He looked a little confused. He was just not getting it. I gave him a weird look, looked at the cake and then at the pile of aluminum foil, and looked back at him without saying a word. He circled around and I saw a sudden look of recognition come over his face.

“Is that what I think it is?!” Yes, I told him. He laughed, and I mean hard, and then he said, “Thank God! We can finally get rid of that thing!” How romantic.

We both thought the cake was in remarkably good form. The icing smelled like icing but when we touched the inside where the slice was missing, it felt really dry, like sand. No, we didn’t eat any.

Hubby enjoyed his presents, the pizza came, and we watched our wedding video. Our teenage boys had never seen it before. Pretty weird to see how young everyone looked, including ourselves, and a lot of people have since passed away. I was feeling sentimental and teary eyed here and there, but that quickly dissipated because boys will be boys and my 3 guys cracked a lot of weird jokes throughout. Again, very romantic.

What happened to the cake? Well, this cake is famous now. I gave it a fresh wrapping of aluminum foil and back into the freezer it went.

The old, bald guy and I are about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary!!! The picture of the old ripped and torn aluminum foil wrapped thingy-a-bobby? It is the top tier of our wedding cake, and it has been in our freezer for literally 20 years. Read it again.

We have all heard about how you are supposed to put some of your wedding cake in the freezer and then defrost it for your one year anniversary and actually eat a bite. Yuck. For some reason we reluctantly participated in this tradition. Even if it tastes great, it is very difficult mentally to cope with the one year old part. Who came up with this silly tradition? Perhaps it is an early test of the “in sickness or in health” part of your marriage vows with regards to food poisoning.

Let’s move on to mental health. Where or how is mine? For some odd reason, the cake went back into the freezer and became a point of nostalgia for me. Years passed and my hubby would occasionally ask me when can we get rid of this cake? We’re never going to it eat. Well, true. But it would be like throwing away a piece of our history. I can’t say that we argued about it but I think he saw that it would make me sad. He gave up asking quite some time ago. I think he came to terms with the fact that as long as I am alive, this cake will be in the freezer. Honestly, if he had thrown it away without my knowledge for the greater part of the last decade, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. But, don’t tell him that.

So there I am, trying to think of some unique gift for our 20 year anniversary and I suddenly remember – the cake!!!! I’m going to defrost and put it on the table next to his real presents. I think he and our kids will get a kick out of it. I’m pretty sure our boys don’t even know what that ragged aluminum foil wrapped thing is that has been in the freezer for their entire lives. I’m not sure if they have ever heard the story behind it. Don’t worry – the old, bald guy is not into social media so he won’t see this post until post anniversary.

There is only one problem. I will be setting myself up for disaster. I imagine that after a fun evening and some giggling about the ridiculousness of it all, my hubby will probably ask if we can finally throw the cake away. It’s a dilemma. We’ll just see how things go. . .

Oh my Gombie, how I hate taxes!!! The old bald guy and I own a small personal business which means that we have to pay self employment taxes. That means we get the privilege of paying taxes twice.

For all of you working zombies out there that roll your eyes in disgust at the chunk that went missing from your paycheck – we all know that really sucks. But I’ll tell you something that sucks even more. Imagine taking out your checkbook and writing a check to the government every three months. That really, really sucks.

If you have a “normal” job, your employer pays for your social security (ouch for them), and then the government also sucks your paycheck dry for your portion of social security (ouch for you.) That is double suckage. When you own a small business you have to pay twice, once for yourself as a business owner, and once for yourself as an employee – basically double ouch.

Okay fine. The rules are the rules. So, we have to hire an accountant to figure out how much suckage we have to pay to the government. We have no clue what said accountant is doing except that we end up with literally a book full of pages, forms, subforms and schedules as evidence that the job has been done. At the end of it all we are grateful and give our thanks to the government for making us pay hundreds of dollars to figure out how many thousands of dollars we owe.

So here’s my thinking. The accountant payment is a kind of a tax. Why don’t we propose new legislation? Any fees paid to accountants should be a direct deduction from the amount owed to the feds. Not only could we stand up to the feds and punish them for making us go through this yearly anguish, but it also provides an incentive for them to make it less complicated. The public will love it, and the accountants will love it. It might even create some new loopholes – and isn’t that what taxes are all about? That’s my two cents, folks.

The old bad guy and I had this dog named Agnes. She was a short haired, brown something or other that we got from the local humane society. When she was really worked up, her hairline that ran down the middle of her back would raise up, but backwards. She was the friendliest dog ever, but she was also very intimidating if you were on the other side of the fence. We got a lot of great comments on her – personality, personality, personality, Type A.

Agnes was quite often, a pain in the rear. She was definitely an alpha female. So much so, that she would raise her leg to go the bathroom, she wasn’t letting the males have anything on her. I have blogged about her issues with skunks. I almost put something into Big, Bad Wolfbag about skunks but I felt I already had enough material. So then there was the toad thing.

One day, I heard Agnes barking her brains out in the backyard. Yes, she was drooling and foaming at the mouth, just like in the book. I saw this toad on the ground. She was barking at it and almost trying to bite it but you could tell whatever slime substance was on its back was deterring her. We put the poor toad outside of the fence and worried some about Agnes. We have her plenty of water to drink and she turned out just fine.

There was the time when the old, bald guy and I were camping near a lake. We saw this young boy come up over the hill. Agnes’ ears perked up and she looked very alert. The boy saw her and stopped in his tracks. The old bald guy spoke out loud to himself, “Please don’t run”. Of course, the kid turned and ran, and Agnes chased after him. He must have been terrified. Agnes was the kind of dog that would chase after anything that ran away from her, but luckily for humans, she wouldn’t do anything but be playful once she caught up to you. Anyhow, we feared repercussions from angry parents so we packed up, called Agnes who dutifully came back, and we left. A version of this is in the opening chapter of my Wolfbag book, except I changed the boy to a girl.

Another time, we were camping at Lake Pleasant, which is why I decided to include the name of this lake in the book. Agnes loved swimming and we saw her swimming after a bird that looked like it had a broken wing. The closer she got to the bird, the bigger her eyes became. When she got really close, the bird flew away and Agnes turned around and swam back to shore. Before she got out of the water the bird flew back and plopped down near Agnes and swam away again with the appearance of the broken wing. Of course, Agnes turned back around and swam after the bird. We were sure Agnes kept getting too close to this bird’s nest on shore. This literally went on for at least an hour. Yes, this is also in the book. When I did internet searches to find birds that played the broken wing trick, I could only find a certain bird that to my recollection did not look anything like the bird that played this trick on our dog, and that is why the type of bird remains unnamed in the book.

The fishing incident in the book is completely made up and had nothing to do with Agnes. However, there was a time when our other dog, Ed, got tangled in someone’s fishing line as he swam by. That silly angler saw him coming and should have reeled his line in, but instead he watched the whole thing happen and then blamed us for letting our dog tangle his fishing line. Luckily, as Ed kept swimming the line untangled on its own and we didn’t have to unhook him or anything. We were glad because we didn’t want to deal with that dummy anymore anyhow.

I could go on and on about Agnes, and I’m sure in the future I will. Now you know a lot of the events which inspired me came from real life and you can read all about them in my third chapter book called Moore Zombies: Big, Bad Wolfbag.

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